If the image of bankers has hit a new low during the recession, the reputation of their wives has not been far behind. From articles about how ruthlessly ambitious wives of Lehman bankers competed in team-building hikes despite injured legs, to suspicions they care more about an opulent lifestyle than the morality of their partner's dealings, the stereotypes have not been kind.

But her career and politics expose a more radical edge. With a string of impressive degrees, Fox Carney is a development economist who in her spare time fights rampant consumerism and happily declares: "Having more stuff does not make us happy."

The wives of central bankers are conventionally expected to be solid and predictable. Mervyn King's interior-designer wife Barbara, whom he married in a small ceremony in 2007, for instance, is seldom seen. Philipp Hilderbrand's wife's forays into the headlines ended his career when she bought half-a-million US dollars three weeks before the central bank intervened to cap the Swiss franc. Yet Fox Carney is keen to get her opinions heard, contributing to newspapers and online politics sites – and some of her views have a distinctly leftwing slant.

In a recent piece on inequality, the mother of four wrote warmly about the Occupy movement – which channelled public anger against the bankers. And despite her husband being set to earn £624,000 from his new role, she blames the "visibility and excess" of those in the "top 0.1%" for increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. She even goes on to enthuse about The Spirit Level, a book that suggests economic growth is less important than equality of income, declaring: "The politics of division are coming home to roost."

Then there is her environmental campaigning. As well as being vice-president of research in a "progressive" thinktank in Canada, Fox Carney also runs an eco-products review site. Alongside discussions of what she will buy her four daughters for Christmas (referring to them as the "young Foxes") she is scathing about our consumerist culture. She writes that she has "seen, firsthand, the devastation that our willful refusal to change our consumerist habits is wreaking on marginal communities".

The author of The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson, says of Fox Carney: "It's important to have that progressive thinking we are beginning to get among a few people in places where they are likely to influence the multinationals and the financial sector, the main bastions of the rise in income inequality."

Yet not everyone is so sure. Canadian business magazine Macleans said the idea that Fox Carney was "some sort of tree-hugging leftist radical" was "bizarre". And while it's true that being lectured on inequality by someone so wealthy might seem odd, it's good to know someone close to the Bank of England has more than money on their mind.